Starting a MySQL instance is simple:
$ docker run --name some-mysql -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=my-secret-pw -d joyndjama/mysql:latest... where some-mysql is the name you want to assign to your container, my-secret-pw is the password to be set for the MySQL root user.
This image exposes the standard MySQL port (3306), so container linking makes the MySQL instance available to other application containers. Start your application container like this in order to link it to the MySQL container:
$ docker run --name some-app --link some-mysql:mysql -d application-that-uses-mysqlThe following command starts another mysql container instance and runs the mysql command line client against your original mysql container, allowing you to execute SQL statements against your database instance:
$ docker run -it --link some-mysql:mysql --rm joyndjama/mysql:latest sh -c 'exec mysql -h"$MYSQL_PORT_3306_TCP_ADDR" -P"$MYSQL_PORT_3306_TCP_PORT" -uroot -p"$MYSQL_ENV_MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD"'... where some-mysql is the name of your original mysql container.
This image can also be used as a client for non-Docker or remote MySQL instances:
$ docker run -it --rm mysql mysql -hsome.mysql.host -usome-mysql-user -pMore information about the MySQL command line client can be found in the MySQL documentation